Scatological Morass

"Remarque demonstrates how wars reduce human beings to the level of animals and finally to excrement."-- Dieter Rollfinke, page 99

The reason viewers protested The Singing Detective in 1986 wasn't due to Potter's lechery, as such, so much as that his dramaturgic skill with repression and loss of control hit too close to home. If you really want to see one of the most original musicals on the face of the earth, ignore the Robert Downey Jr film of the same title from 2003. This is radical, and accessible. Dennis has no elitist pretensions whatsoever, and his protagonist, as a child, lets his school know exactly what it can do with the rote drilling of a British working class education.

Whyy showed true courage during its encore airing of the series, and then, in time honored fashion, whisked it away with nary a peep since. Gambon trying to fight off an erection and climax is priceless, and Potter gets to the heart of the underside of medical institutionalization, which is the same world over. Sick and sex are very closely entwined, and Potter's pop culture pizzazz did as much to inspire some overly ambitious narrative long poems of mine as any workshop. 

It takes extraordinary courage to admit we're all guilty pigs, curious about what cum tastes like, or fascinated by the coarse rectal hair exposed when we catch mommy having a five pound fuck in the dale. I don't know what I feel about Potter's work critically, strange as that may seem in a post, but the reason for this boils down to logistics. This was a tough subject matter for me in 86, since, having spent most of adolescence on the ward, The Singing Detective packed too hard a punch. Sentiment had to roll with it, as opposed to analyzing, evaluating it-- but one thing it achieves, and perhaps led to the weakening of arts and sciences colleges thereby, is merging of commercial fiction with mature drama, creating something resistant to classification.

I got lazy as an undergraduate and cited James Mitchner in a paper, and the professor in Jerry McGuire gave me an A- and a mild reprimand, and he was absolutely correct within his paradigm as a radical liberal to do so. By the same token, I was not entirely *off*. James Mitchner was a commercial novelist, and popular-- but his sagas were well researched, descriptive, and interested me in very odd things-- the evolution of Yahweh, for instance, within Jewish theology.

I do not know if I am returning to Liberty on the Rocks in July. The usual reasons. My poverty is writing my appearance. I am afraid to break the Jazzy getting into the eatery, but the cripple is pouting she wants a new family and since I've tried everyone else, maybe the anarchists will treat me decently (oh, yes?), but our group leader, who accused me of using his name in print, so his pseudonym is now Black Adder, said that telling Trudy Richardson, as rental agent, that I hated her, was a powerful statement.

In my mind, it isn't. We'll return to that later as this post is long enough for the moment-- but if I am too heavy in my philosophy for the boyz live at the table, I'll knock it out of the park here too. Is my honesty about my betrayal in the fine hands of disability activism, my honesty about my laundry list of hating my fake friends like Josie, bear responsibility for Roof?

Tactically, he was a moron, misapplying violence for an unachievable goal. But the hate crime statue equally reveals itself as nonsensical by progressives attempting to categorize it as an extracurricular exception. Adjudicating a spree killer as a domestic terrorist puts American jurisprudence on par with Vladimir Putin's playing board. My pain as a hate crime victim tearing up in front of my unfortunately homosexual state legislator was legitimate. I consider my negativity generated thereby as balancing the scales.